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Norman Podhoretz (born January 16, 1930) is an American intellectual considered to be a prominent neo-conservative thinker and writer.

Norman Podhoretz was raised in Brownsville, Brooklyn, a low-income neighborhood in racial transition. Podhoretz's family was left-wing, with his elder sister joining a socialist youth movement.

Podhoretz received bachelor's degrees from both Columbia University—where he studied under Lionel Trilling—and the Jewish Theological Seminary. He later received a BA with first-class honors and an MA from Cambridge University.

Perhaps best known as editor of Commentary, Podhoretz served as the magazine's editor-in-chief from 1960 (when he replaced Elliot E. Cohen) until his retirement in 1995. Podhoretz he remains Commentary's editor-at-large. In 1963 he wrote the influential essay, “My Negro Problem - And Ours."

From 1981-1987, Podhoretz served as an adviser to the U.S. Information Agency. From 1995-2003 he was a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In 2004 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor the U.S. Government can bestow on a civilian.

Podhoretz is married to author Midge Decter and is the father of syndicated columnist John Podhoretz.

He asserts that the war on Islamofascism and terror is World War IV (World War III having been the Cold War against left-wing totalitarianism). A book on that subject is scheduled for 2007.

• 1964: Doings and Undoings: The Fifties and After (essays on American writers)
• 1967: Making It (autobiography) ISBN 0-394-43449-8
• 1979: Breaking Ranks: A Political Memoir
• 1980: The Present Danger: "Do We Have the Will to Reverse the Decline of American Power?" ISBN 0-671-41395-3
• 1982: Why We Were in Vietnam (history and argument) ISBN 0-671-44578-2
• 1986: The Bloody Crossroads: Where Literature and Politics Meet (essays on Camus, Kundera, Henry Adams, Kissinger, Solzhenitsyn, Orwell et al.) ISBN 0-671-61891-1
• 2000: Ex-Friends: Falling Out With Allen Ginsberg, Lionel & Diana Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt, and Norman Mailer (memoir) ISBN 1-893554-17-1
• 2001: My Love Affair With America: The Cautionary Tale of a Cheerful Conservative (autobiography) ISBN 1-893554-41-4
• 2002: The Prophets: Who They Were, What They Are (about the classical Hebrew prophets) ISBN 0-7432-1927-9
• 2003: The Norman Podhoretz Reader: A Selection of His Writings from the 1950s through the 1990s, edited by Thomas L. Jeffers; foreword by Paul Johnson ISBN 0-7432-3661-0

• Bloom, Alexander. Prodigal Sons: The New York Intellectuals & Their World, Oxford University Press, 1986. ISBN 978-0-19-505177-3

• Norman Podhoretz, How to win World War IV, Commentary Magazine, February 2002.
• Joseph Rago, Unrepentant Neocon: Norman Podhoretz stands IV-square for the Bush doctrine, Wall Street Journal, August 12, 2006.
• "My Negro Problem - And Ours" [1]
• Nathan Abrams, Commentary Magazine 1945-1959: A Journal of Significant Thought and Opinion. Bio on Podhoretz and his early Commentary years